


when metal meets man (and gets in man's personal space, asks too many questions, and befriends man, despite man's intentions)

by pensrcool



Category: Rooster Teeth/Achievement Hunter RPF
Genre: Avengers AU, Gen, M/M, achievement heroes
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-07-20
Updated: 2015-09-13
Packaged: 2018-04-10 08:07:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,149
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4383956
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pensrcool/pseuds/pensrcool
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"What do you get when you put a god and the owner of a billion dollar company in a room together?" Geoff asks, casually raiding Jack's fridge as if he lives there and didn't walk in the door five minutes ago.<br/>"This sounds like a bad joke," he starts, before Geoff interrupts him.<br/>"A dead guy, or a whole new level of pining. And as we all know, Gavin is still alive. So."<br/>"So."</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. lindsay tuggey, mouth of gold

Immediately, Michael doesn't like the guy. Burnie had told him beforehand Gavin could be trusted, but Burnie tells him a lot of things. That doesn’t change the fact that his smile is off, and his handshake is weird. It's not that he seems insincere-he's genuinely excited to meet him, if the way he won't shut up is any indication-but it doesn't seem right. Michael takes a minute to inspect him while he continues to chatter, and slowly, details start to emerge. His hands flutter around him, seemingly a vital component to talking, even if they contribute no meaning. His eyes are green, and when Michael looks him dead on, they crinkle in the corners. And he won’t stop fucking smiling. Which is weird, right? It’s weird. The circumstances they’re meeting under aren’t exactly ideal, or even good, but he’s still grinning like he’s won the lottery.

Because he’s an asshole, Michael makes a forced smile that he knows freaks people out, and then actually grins when the guy’s expression goes slightly horrified for a split second. Burnie cuts him a look, because hey, they’re about to start a meeting about saving the world, wouldn’t kill you to take it seriously and not fuck with your new teammate. Michael gives him the same grin he gave Gavin, and then turns to Burnie and Agent Lindsay Tuggey, who are standing expectantly in the middle of the room.

In the silent pause between when Gavin shuts up and Burnie starts talking, he can hear her mutter “Alright, awkward,” and SHIELD instantly gains a measure of trust from him.

“I’m pretty sure you all know why you’re here,” he starts, scanning their faces, giving up when he’s met by a bunch of blank stares.

“Shit almost got fucked. You’ve all done your measure to keep that from actually happening, and let me tell you, we appreciate that. Earth appreciates that. Your Nobel Peace Prizes are in the mail. But your job’s not done.”

He taps his watch face and a screen pops out, a play by play of all the almost disasters that have occurred recently. He gives it a moment to sink in, and in the middle of it, Gavin leans over from where he’s standing by Michael and whispers.

“GDF tech. Not officially on the market yet, but I like Burnie.”

Michael catches the smug smile on his face before he tunes back into Burnie’s speech. “None of these were isolated incidents. None of these were flukes. None of these gave us enough evidence to believe that something like this wouldn’t happen again. So what we’re proposing is a contingency plan.”

At that point, Lindsay clears her throat, and Burnie nods and steps back. “The working title is The Avengers. Obviously, if any of you are opposed to that, you’ll get a say in changing it. But here’s what we’re thinking. All of this stuff that's happened? You've all worked to keep it from happening. But it'd save everyone a lot of property damage if we could prevent things before stuff started crashing into sidewalks. Which is where the Avengers comes in."

She gives Burnie a small nod, and the images from his watch go from near destruction to _them_. Geoff pulling arrows out of an alien’s chest, and Gavin using the suit to make an emergency weld on a bridge that is about to collapse. Michael, looking bored and swinging Mogar around, apparently unimpressed by the people pointing guns at him, which cuts to Michael standing in the same spot, but now the circle of gunmen are knocked flat on their asses and are slowly crawling away. Scans of articles Ryan’s published in scientific journals, with the occasional cut in to the Other Guy. Jack’s best propaganda. Ray, protecting a parade of important people.

“Look, Ma, I’m on TV!” he says, deadpan, as the images continue to cycle through to more people he served as bodyguard for. Lindsay snorts and composes herself, regaining her train of thought.

"SHIELD was pretty much founded on being paranoid assholes. Everything anyone doesn't want them to know, they have files on. Which is why we were able to find you so quickly, Michael.”

She flashes him an apologetic smile.

“Sorry for being shady, nosy, spies. But now that we’ve all met and played nice, we’re totally willing to extend our resources to all of you on a daily basis, not just an ‘everyone is going to die if we don’t’ basis. Gav’s been great at keeping us top of the line, so we can promise that you’ll be working with that advantage.”

Another smug grin.

“Not to mention, our intel is probably more complete than any back alley channel you’ve got going right now. As soon as you say yes to this whole thing, you get complete access. We’ve got a program that’s constantly running through everything. It pulls weird stuff, and then a team of researchers go through the weird stuff and put the pieces together. With you involved, we can actually have a chance at getting a leg up on the competition. Competition being whatever dickwad decides that earth is now theirs.”

Lindsay takes a breath and clasps her hands together.

“So that’s the sales pitch. We scratch your back, you get fully debriefed and run out to save the world before it needs it. All in favor, say aye.”

Michael hears a groan, and turns to see Ramsey rubbing his face.

“Ray and I are already on payroll. Why the hell did we have to sit through all that?”

She shrugs.

“Call it your first experience with teamwork. One of you suffers through the speech, all of you have to suffer through it.”

He mumbles something that sounds suspiciously close to _bullshit_ while Lindsay continues to grin and look at them all expectantly.

“You don’t really have to say aye. But some sort of verbal confirmation would be cool. Or you could raise your hand. I’m not picky.”

Michael watches as Gavin’s hand shoots up and everyone else follows suit. Lindsay practically beams, and Burnie’s fighting a smile.

“Awesome. Great. Also, our plane doesn’t leave until tomorrow, so if all of the Avengers feel like it, my niece would really appreciate some signatures.”

“Did you hear that?” Gavin stage whispers, leaning in too close again. “We’re Avengers.”


	2. geoff ramsey and the adventures of being unerringly observant

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Somewhere along the line (after Michael learns Gavin's a piece of shit, before Gavin learns Michael's a piece of shit), they become friends.

Michael's hunch turns out to be wrong. Gavin's nice enough-more than nice enough, actually, he's the definition of a perfect host-but it takes awhile for Michael to shake the feeling he just wants something.

When Gavin's not perfecting the latest in a long string of inventions, he's following Michael around and talking about anything. Inevitably, this gets steered to Gavin asking questions. Which, okay, Michael thought he expected, but he couldn't have predicted a single goddamn thing that comes out of Gavin's mouth.

"So, say you have a million dollars."

"I have a million dollars."

"No, I mean- say you get a million dollars from someone, but there's a condition. A little asterisk on the briefcase of money. And for the rest of your life, every time you hear the word aardvark, you pass out for half an hour."

"What the fuck is an aardvark?"

"It's an animal thing. It's got this nose. Doesn't matter. Would you do it?"

And so on and so forth. He does pepper in the occasional question about Michael's home planet, or asks if he can have some of Michael's DNA to run samples against, but for the most part, Gavin is... Gavin. He calls science _earth magic_ , but only around Michael, and when Michael informs him that he learned as much about astrophysics as he could at a community college a few years before Gavin was born, Gavin skips being embarrassed completely and just asks him if he enjoyed it. He doesn't bother offering to teach Michael. Which is probably a good thing, Michael thinks, because Gavin thinks in novels, but only the third sentence of every fifth paragraph makes it out. Not a strong foundation for explaining things.

He thinks about Gavin's thought process a lot, actually, tries to match up the guy who's pure energy contained in human form who laughs with his entire body at Michael's shitty jokes with the guy he sees in awful magazines, actual gold sunglasses and grins and clutching a model's arm, tries to make either of those things fit the first time they were in the same room, when Gavin emanated worry and fear and anger as he dive bombed a god in an attempt to get the ice out of Geoff's eyes, to make him Geoff again.

He's still not entirely convinced that Gavin's not actually three different people. But that’s okay, because he’s reaching a point where he likes the Gavin he knows, disregard for personal space and all.

That’s not to say he only likes Gavin. He’s relieved that he’s lucked out and none of the people on his team are raging assholes. He’s been friends with Ray for a few years now, and he’s found out he has startlingly similar taste to Geoff when it comes to movies. Ryan’s fun to be around, when he’s not hiding somewhere, and Jack is plain old nice. But Gavin’s the one who seeks him out, so Gavin’s the one who learns what all his buttons are, and Gavin’s the one who grins while he pushes every last one of them. Michael doesn’t take it personally. It took him about two seconds of being around Gavin to figure out that his weird, fucked up way of making friends is to piss them off for his personal amusement.

He says as much to Geoff once, while Gavin’s trying to verbally outline blueprints for Ryan, and he has to stop to define every other word (No, see, it’s really simple, you’ve got the current bit running through the wiggly thing that connects through to make the-the _what_ -the wiggly-you mean the wire-I mean the wiggly, Ryan, don’t interrupt,) and Geoff and Michael are doing an equally terrible job at concealing their grins. They both lose it completely when Gavin shushes Ryan, breaking into a quiet fit of giggles that only gets harder to suppress when Gavin shoots a grin their way that says he _absolutely_ knows what he’s doing.

When they’ve both recovered, Michael inclines his head slightly towards Gavin before glancing at Geoff. It’s less of a question, and more of a confirmation, but he asks anyway.

“He always like this?”

Geoff’s nod is immediate, but it takes him a moment to actually form his response.

“He's both the smartest dickhead I know, and the biggest dickhead I know. Makes him a hell of a lot of fun at parties. Not so much day to day, according to most people."

He gives Michael a look then, and doesn't say it out loud, but Michael is almost positive he's evaluating whether or not Michael counts as most people. Michael's guessing he's satisfied, based on the fact that he's not glaring, and then Geoff cements that guess by telling Michael he's a good guy (too good for Gavin, he tacks on, grinning like crazy), complete with a fond look and a pat on the shoulder. So that's good. Probably.

***

He has a hard time pinpointing when they stop being Michael and Gavin and instead become a unit (He’s pretty sure neither of them are doing it on purpose, but that doesn’t change a damn thing). People still give Michael directions to where Gavin is when he walks into a room, and the tabloids still phase out their pictures of Gavin and his date of the week for pictures of their “Bois night out”, where Gavin’s gaze is hazy but his grip on Michael’s arm is firm (mostly because Michael’s about ten times as supportive as Gavin’s legs once Gavin’s drunk), and they capture Gavin’s smile, but they miss the way Michael grins at Gavin, miss his tiny fits of laughter when Gavin leans over to whisper something in his ear.

Michael’s not complaining about any of it. He likes Gavin, even with all the despites (despite the fact that he not so quietly needs to be the center of attention, despite the fact that he makes fun of Michael for putting pineapple on his pizza, despite, despite, despite). Whatever. Gavin’s funny, and he has this aura about him that puts strangers at ease, and Michael likes him. No one’s asking, and Michael’s not offering up an explanation.

Well. Most people aren’t asking. Geoff’s asking frequently, probes him about anything slightly related to Gavin in a way that Michael thinks bears a startling resemblance to a mother lion protecting her cub. He snaps that to Geoff once, when he’s being particularly overbearing, and he almost laughs at the way Geoff’s face goes slack, as if this is really news to him.

The questions come a lot less often after that, after Geoff slinks up to him and gives him a condensed version of Gavin’s sob story, explains how his parents died when he was a teenager, but they weren’t exactly around before that, and Geoff’s spent all the time he’s known him doing his best to at least attempt to fill that gap. Michael feels like a piece of shit for pointing it out, but Geoff just shrugs it off and tells him it’s no surprise Gavin never mentioned it, tells him to just not be a dick now that he knows.

That marks when Michael realizes what a weird balance they strike, where they manage to talk constantly without ever really saying anything. It’s fun, and it’s nice, but Michael’s wondering how long that can last. The closest they come to _talking_ about anything is the day that Gavin drags him to a pool, and Michael drags him, shrieks and all, into the water. When it gets to the point where Michael has the slightest tinge of pink, they go inside and collapse on a couch. Gavin mumbles something from where he’s facedown on some cushions, and Michael halfheartedly calls him an asshole before he tells him to speak up. So Gavin turns, props himself onto his arms, and stares.

“Why the tattoos?”

Which isn’t what Michael was expecting. He was waiting for something nonsensical, something that would be easy to answer. His hand wanders to the one on his shoulder, and he outlines the triangles in the middle of flames, and he searches desperately for words that will even begin to explain it. Gavin, bless him, has picked up on that, and looks like he's considering blurting out _never mind_ , but Michael interjects before he can speak.

"Zelda came out about a month after I went from "Angry man falls from sky, curses the heavens, wreaks havoc on small town," to the well adjusted citizen of earth you know and love, because I figured I'd get time knocked off for good behavior. Legend looked cool as shit. Then I played it, and it was cool as shit. And the whole thing was so... You got a real distinct way of telling stories."

When Gavin gives him a confused look, he frowns and shakes his head.

"Not you, you. You weren't alive yet, idiot. Humans. You got a perfect hero and a perfect princess and perfect artifacts of power that'll give you awesome attributes and you got a villain that tries to fuck all that perfect up who gets defeated. You're suckers for happy endings with no loose ends. It's very Earth. Not very Asgard. And, you know. I figured I was gonna be around here for awhile anyway. Fuck everyone on Asgard and their holier-than-thou bullshit. Fuckers treated you and everyone else who hadn't managed contact like you were some kind of idiotic ant farm. Fun to look at, but not very bright. They'd already kicked me out. They couldn't do shit to me if I got a stupid tattoo on earth. So I did. And I stopped hoping I'd be able to go back."

He pauses long enough to gesture to the rest of his arms.

"The other ones just look awesome and are really great games."

Michael's expecting some silence, or maybe even for Gavin to make an attempt at comforting him, and he's relieved when he doesn't do either.

"You were a rebellious teenager, you mean."

He snorts.

"Yeah. Sure."

"Shame you didn't have the leather for it."

"That's what happens when you're two trips around the sun from the eighties."

Gavin grins, then, accompanies his smile with a crack about Michael being old, and Michael's a little shocked at how fast they move from tragic backstory to their regular routine.

***

Geoff doesn’t do well alone. So Michael’s only a little surprised when he gets a call a couple of days after Griffon goes out of town because “She’s busy being an awesome world renowned artist or something,” and an invitation to Geoff’s place. They’re watching a fucking _terrible_ movie, complete with copious amounts of blood and terrible special effects when it cuts to a commercial featuring an actress Michael vaguely knows.

“She gets hotter every year.”

Geoff says with a sigh, and Michael nods, because he’s supposed to. There’s a slight hesitation before Geoff says anything else, but he glances at Michael and says it anyway. “

Dude, are you into humans? I mean, are people just not your type, or is no one your type, or do you have someone back home?”

Michael already knows his answer. He’s been on this planet for awhile, he knows he’s a fan of humans in just about every sense of the word. But he goes through the process anyway, compares how he feels about people to the way Geoff talks about his wife, runs through an entire list of acquaintances and friends before he gets stuck.

He thinks about the way Gavin seems to physically light up a room. About how easily a smile slides onto his face. About how his laugh is infectious, about how he gulps down energy drinks like air, about how quickly he decided Michael was a part of his antics forever and always.

This isn’t new, per say. Michael’s known too much about Gavin since he met him. But the way his stomach swoops without his permission because he’s thinking about _Gavin_ , out of all the people in the world, that’s a fucking development that he’s not going to deal with while Geoff is sitting there and looking at him.

He tries to forget about it, and focuses on the shitty green monster on the screen that’s chasing the blonde heroine, and chooses his words to make it sound like he didn't just have a revelation about what the hell Gavin means to him.

“Nah,” He finally says, thinking about the way Gavin had decided they were friends before they'd even met, “People are pretty alright.”


End file.
